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Friday, April 1, 2011

Adapted from a
letter to the U.S. Senate.
The nation is risking a fiscal calamity that threatens a catastrophic
default on the $14.2 trillion national debt and the collapse of the
dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If something is not done to
bring the nation’s fiscal house into order, soon the debt will become
too large to even refinance, let alone be repaid.

That is why Americans for Limited Government strongly endorses the
Senate Republican Balanced Budget Amendment and urges all members of the
Senate to fight for its immediate adoption. Soon the gross national
debt will become larger than the entire economy, and by 2021, the
Office of Management and Budget projects it will soar to over $25
trillion.
Interest payments alone threaten to destabilize the nation’s finances
very soon.
In 2010, the Treasury paid a total of $413 billion in interest on the
debt, including $216 billion to the Social Security and Medicare
trust funds. The total interest is a real obligation that requires
real borrowing to meet, and cannot be readily discounted as revenue to
the entitlement programs when it is in fact a liability to taxpayers.

Currently, the $14.2 trillion national debt already stands at 95.5
percent of the nation’s $14.8 trillion Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
While it is unclear at what percentage of debt-to-GDP that the debt will
become too large to refinance, the warning signs are already there
that we cannot even meet our current obligations honestly.

Presidential candidate Barack Obama promised that his policies would
cause electricity rates to “skyrocket” and “bankrupt” any company
trying to build a coal-fired generating plant. This is one promise he
and his über-regulators are keeping.

President Obama energetically promotes wind and solar projects that
require millions of acres of land and billions of dollars in subsidies,
to generate expensive, intermittent electricity and create jobs that
cost taxpayers upwards of $220,000 apiece — most of them in China.

His Interior Department is locking up more coal and petroleum
prospects, via “wild lands” and other designations, and dragging its
feet on issuing leases and drilling permits. Meanwhile, his
Environmental Protection Agency is challenging shale gas drilling and
fracking, and imposing draconian carbon dioxide emission rules, now that
Congress and voters have rejected cap-tax-and-trade. That’s for
starters.

The beat-down of hydrocarbon energy goes on. Oil, gas and coal
provide 85 percent of the energy that keeps America humming, but the
administration is doing all it can to take it out of our mix. American
voters, consumers and workers may want more drilling, mining and use of
hydrocarbons, to get the economy going again. But the administration
has a different agenda.
Get full story here.

“I have this bad habit of telling the truth and speaking my mind.
Political correctness isn’t exactly on my agenda,” said Cain. The
conservative businessman and former radio host, who has opened a
presidential exploratory committee, spoke to a luncheon audience of
about 50 at the Beach Club.

“I want people in my administration that are 100 percent dedicated to
the constitution of the United States of America, not sharia law,” Cain
said of his Iowa remark, which he said came in response to a reporter’s
question.

“We have a First Amendment. They (Muslims) have every right to
practice their religion, freely. Don’t try to force it on us and the
rest of us and don’t bring sharia law into American courts. Its real
simple — American law in American courts. That’s the way it ought to
be.”

In a brief interview afterward, Cain was asked if he believes a
Muslim can be loyal to the constitution.
“They could be,” Cain said. “But I haven’t done any surveys to find
out how many Muslims are loyal to the constitution. But I don’t know any
Muslims who will subvert sharia law for our laws. That’s the problem I
have. And I don’t have time to do the research to find out. I’d have a
country to run.”

Fox
News:
House Republicans offered delayed outrage to President Obama’s point
man on U.S. development and humanitarian missions, who testified before
Congress this week that a budget plan House Republicans passed last
month would lead to 70,000 kids dying.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah told the House Appropriations State
and Foreign Ops subcommittee on Wednesday that the budget plan, which
would cut $61 billion in federal spending, would lead to the deaths of
30,000 kids in a malaria control program that would have to be scaled
back, 24,000 from a lack of immunizations and 16,000 from a lack of
skilled attendants at birth.

“There’s a way to do this that does not have to cost lives and we’re
very focused and very much want to work with the committee to identify a
path forward that can allow us to be effective at doing so,” he said.

Shah is seeking $59.5 billion in funding for his agency, up 22 percent,
or $10.7 billion, from the current level.
None of the Republicans, who control the committee, challenged what
Shah called a “conservative estimate.” The subject quickly changed to
agricultural production in Afghanistan and food security in Guatemala.

But subcommittee member Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., sent a statement
to FoxNews.com Thursday saying, “Nearly every administration witness
appearing before the Appropriations Committee has put forward nightmare
scenarios and dire numbers to argue why we should not be reducing
spending in any program.

“Republicans won’t be drawn into a debate over what might happen
based on speculation and hype,” he said. “We understand that if we don’t
rein in these trillion-dollar-plus deficits, programs like this one may
have to be eliminated entirely in the near future.”

Lewis noted that the GOP plan reduced the overall USAID account but
left it entirely up to the administration on how to find the savings.

“I have faith that the administration will find a way to reduce
spending without leading to the deaths of children,” he said.

Shah’s comments contained echoes of former Democratic Rep. Alan
Grayson’s explosive charge two years ago that the Republicans’ idea of
health care was wanting sick people to “die quickly.” Grayson lost his
Florida seat in November’s midterm elections.

President Obama and Senate Democrats, who want to cut significantly
less federal spending, have argued that the House GOP budget plan to cut
$61 billion will force a government shutdown in one week if the two
sides can’t reach a compromise.

Republicans have also offered their share of frightening futuristic
scenarios should its $61 billion in proposed cuts — or 3.7 percent of
the year’s projected $1.6 trillion deficit — not pass Congress,
including questioning whether military members will be left on the
battlefield without pay or the country will default like Greece.
Shah isn’t the first Democrat to ratchet up the rhetoric in a budget
battle. Some have suggested that all manner of health and safety issues,
including tsunami warning centers and foster care programs, will go
unmanned.
Earlier this month, Vice President Biden likened the GOP budget plan
to rape victims being blamed for rape.

“It’s amazing how these Republicans, the right wing of this party —
whose philosophy threw us into this godawful hole we’re in, gave us the
tremendous deficit we’ve inherited — that they’re now using the very
economic condition they have created to blame the victim — whether it’s
organized labor or ordinary middle-class working men and women,” he told
a lavish Philadelphia fundraising luncheon that raised $400,000 for
Democratic congressional campaigns.

According to newly released census data, Americans are fleeing the
Great Plains for sunnier climes in record numbers, the decades-long
trend only accelerating in the 21st century.

The data, as mapped by the site New
Geography, shows that North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and
Kansas all had more counties with total population decreases than
increases between 2000 and 2010. Meanwhile, southern California,
southern Nevada–especially the Las Vegas area–Arizona, Florida, and
eastern Texas all saw big population gains.

The metro areas that grew the fastest
were all in the west or south. In descending order, they were: Las
Vegas, Nevada; Raleigh, N.C.; Austin, Texas; Charlotte, N.C.; Riverside,
Calif.; Orlando, Fla.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Houston, Texas; and San Antonio,
Texas.

The data also offer information about changes in America’s racial
makeup. Many of the counties that saw the largest increases in their
Hispanic populations were in traditional Hispanic strongholds, including
southern California, Arizona, and south Florida. But others were more
surprising: Counties in eastern Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Kansas, and
Oklahoma all saw an influx of Hispanics, reflecting a trend over the
last decade in which many recent Latino immigrants have spread beyond
urban centers like Los Angeles and Phoenix into more rural parts of the
country.

America’s African-America population, too, saw changes. In a reverse
of the Great Migration of the 1920s-50s, many younger and more educated
blacks moved out of the declining industrial centers of midwestern
states like Michigan and Illinois and back to the south, including areas
of Florida, Georgia, and even Mississippi. Atlanta replaced Chicago as
the metro area with the largest number of blacks, after New York. Today,
57 percent of black Americans live in the south — the highest
percentage since 1960.

The British Government said it was in urgent talks with up to another
10 senior figures in Colonel Gaddafi’s creaking regime about possible
defection following the dramatic arrival in Britain of the Libyan
dictator’s chief henchman for much of his 40 years in power.

As former foreign minister Moussa Koussa was reported to be “talking
voluntarily” to British officials yesterday, the Libyan regime was
desperately struggling to limit the damage of the stunning desertion,
suggesting he was exhausted and suffering from mental problems.

But its capacity to stop the domino effect appeared to be limited.
The Independent understands that British officials are already in
contact with up to 10 leading Libyan officials about following Mr
Koussa’s lead and deserting Gaddafi. As Libyan diplomats at the United
Nations said they expected further defections and reports emerged that a
senior figure in the country’s London embassy had changed sides, David
Cameron said others should now “come to their senses”. Meanwhile,
speculation was rife in Tripoli that a series of defections was
imminent. And it was reinforced by the confirmation that Ali Abdussalam
Treki, a top Libyan official who had also served as Foreign Minister and
UN ambassador, had quit over the “spilling of blood” by government
forces.

But despite official denials, unverified rumours circulating in
Tripoli, fuelled by an Al Jazeera report, focused most closely on Abuzed
Omar Durda, head of the external intelligence service, Mohammed Zwei,
the Secretary of the General People’s Congress, and Deputy Foreign
Minister Abdulati Al Obeidi, who accompanied Moussa Koussa at least as
far as Tunis on the first leg of what turned out to be the Foreign
Minister’s flight to the UK. A fourth official, the urbane Shokri
Ghanem, Oil minister, denied he had fled and told Reuters he was in his
office in Tripoli.

Rebels claimed that Mr Durda had been sent to “liquidate” Mr Koussa
but instead joined a group of Libyan officials at Tunisia’s Djerba
airport who were planning to defect.

There had been speculation last month from Washington that Abdullah
Senussi, a top security adviser and brother-in-law of Colonel Gaddafi’s,
could have been looking for an exit route from the crisis, either for
the country or for himself personally. But there was no evidence last
night that he had deserted, or intended to do so.

It is also understood that British officials have spoken to Mohammed
Ismail, a senior aide to Gaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam, who visited London
recently. The contact was part of the concerted attempt by the Foreign
Office to reach out to members of the Gaddafi regime to encourage them
to defect or at least disassociate themselves from the regime.

Last night, British government sources played down the significance
of the contact with Mr Ismail but confirmed that there were ongoing
discussions with a number of Libyan contacts – which were built up
around the time of Britain’s rapprochement with Libya – in an attempt to
build on Moussa Koussa’s defection. “This is very much part of business
as usual,” one source said.

The defection of Mr Koussa, who flew into Farnborough airport in
Hampshire aboard a private jet from Tunisia on Wednesday night, was
seized upon by David Cameron as evidence that the Tripoli regime was
crumbling.

Speaking at a Downing Street press conference, Mr Cameron said: “The
decision by the former Libyan minister to come to London to resign his
position is a decision by someone at the very top. It tells a compelling
story of the desperation and the fear right at the very top of the
crumbling and rotten Gaddafi regime.”

But while British officials were eager to capitalise on the strategic
significance of the 62-year-old former Libyan spy chief’s vow that he
was “no longer willing” to represent Gaddafi on the international stage,
it was made clear his arrival will also raise uncomfortable questions
about atrocities including the Lockerbie bombing, which happened when he
was a senior figure in Libya’s foreign intelligence service.

Scottish prosecutors told the Foreign Office they want to interview
Mr Koussa in relation to the destruction of Pan Am flight 103 with the
loss of 270 lives. He could also face questioning about the murder of PC
Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan embassy in 1984.

Foreign Secretary William Hague said his Libyan counterpart had not
been offered immunity against prosecution in return for his defection.
But privately, Downing Street sources suggested Mr Koussa was more
likely to be treated as a witness. It is believed he is now being held
at Farnham Castle in Surrey, a conference centre, wedding venue and
tourist attraction.

Educated in the US and a fluent English speaker, Mr Koussa played a
key role in the rapprochement between Libya and the West. The spy chief
negotiated a multibillion-pound compensation package for the victims of
Lockerbie and other atrocities as well as ending its “weapons of mass
destruction” programme. He led efforts to secure the release of the only
man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.

The priority for the coming days will be to debrief Mr Koussa on the
state of the Gaddafi regime, in particular what military capabilities it
still possesses and the identification of other defectors, possibly
with his co-operation as an intermediary.

Amid concerns about Mr Koussa’s mental state, officials have been
careful to surround him with familiar figures, including the ambassador
to Tripoli, Richard Northern, who is now back in Britain following the
closure of the British embassy. Libyan opposition figures made clear
they have little sympathy for the high-profile refugee. Mustafa
Gheriani, a spokesman for the Libyan rebel government, said Mr Koussa
was implicated in the assassination of opposition figures in exile and
brutal internal repression.

He said: “This guy has so much blood on his hands. There are
documented killings, torturing. There’s documentation of what Moussa
Koussa has done. We want him tried by Libyan people.”

The response in Tripoli, meanwhile, did not initially suggest much
knowledge of the factors leading to Mr Koussa’s exit. Moussa Ibrahim,
the regime’s spokesman, told reporters that the Foreign Minister had had
health problems, including diabetes and high blood pressure, and that
he had been given permission to leave the country for medical treatment.
He said later he had been expected to have political discussions while
in Tunisia but had not mentioned going to the UK. Nor had he been in
touch with officials in Tripoli since his departure. “We understand that
he has resigned from his position,” he said.

Meanwhile, buoyed by news of covert US support on the ground, rebels
began massing on the edge of Brega, preparing for a counter-attack on
the town they lost on Wednesday. The rebels had withdrawn rapidly after
coming under rocket fire from Gaddafi’s forces.

The other defectors – and those who may follow Defected: Mustafa Mohamed Abud al-Jeleil
Libya’s former justice minister resigned on 21 February over the
regime’s “excessive use of violence against protesters”. He later
alleged Colonel Gaddafi personally ordered the Lockerbie bombing.

Defected: Ali Abussalam Treki
The senior Libyan politician reportedly defected yesterday after
decades of service to Gaddafi’s regime, including stints as foreign
minister and United Nations representative.

May be next: Adbdullah Senussi
The whereabouts of Colonel Gaddafi’s brother-in-law – who is also his
top security adviser – were unknown yesterday, leading to speculation
that he could have joined the ranks of defectors.

May be next: Shukri Ghanem
Libyan opposition television reported that Libya’s Oil Minister was
one of four officials waiting at Tunisia’s Djerba airport on Wednesday
in the hope of joining Moussa Koussa in London.

May be next: Abuzed Omar Durda
On hearing of Moussa Koussa’s defection Gaddafi ordered the head of
Tripoli’s foreign security agency, Mr Durda, to “liquidate” him,
according to sources. Mr Durda was later reported to be one of the
officials at Djerba airport.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a $14 million jury
award in favor of a former death row inmate who was freed after
prosecutorial misconduct came to light.
Related
The 5-to-4 decision divided along the court’s ideological fault line and
prompted the first dissent read from the bench this term, from Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The former inmate, John Thompson, had sued Harry F. Connick, a former
district attorney in New Orleans, saying his office had not trained
prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence. Prosecutors in the office
had failed to give Mr. Thompson’s lawyers a report showing that blood
at a crime scene was not his.

Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the majority, said that only a
pattern of misconduct would warrant holding Mr. Connick accountable for
what happened on his watch.

Mr. Thompson spent 18 years in prison,
14 of them on death row. “I was delivered an execution warrant in my
cell seven times,” he said in a statement on Tuesday. “I was only weeks
from being executed when my lawyers got the killing stopped.”

The blood evidence would have proved Mr. Thompson
innocent of a 1984 armed robbery. Soon after he was convicted on that
charge, prosecutors tried him for an unrelated murder. After the failure
to turn over the blood evidence came to light in 1999, prosecutors
dismissed the armed robbery charges. A state appeals court later
reversed the murder conviction, reasoning that Mr. Thompson’s armed
robbery conviction had dissuaded him from testifying in his own defense
in the murder case. In 2003, Mr. Thompson was retried for the murder and
found not guilty.

“The role of a prosecutor,” Justice Thomas wrote, “is to see that
justice is done.”
“By their own admission,” he continued, “the prosecutors who tried
Thompson’s armed robbery case failed to carry out this
responsibility. But the only issue before us is whether Connick, as the
policy maker for the district attorney’s office, was deliberately
indifferent to the need to train the attorneys under his authority.”

The answer to that question was no, Justice Thomas wrote, given what
he said was an absence of proof concerning a pattern of misconduct.

Justice Scalia, in a concurrence joined by Justice Alito, said the
misconduct in the case was the work of a single “miscreant prosecutor,”
Gerry Deegan, who suppressed evidence “he believed to be exculpatory, in
an effort to railroad
Thompson.” No amount of training, Justice Scalia wrote, would have
countered such willful wrongdoing.

In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg wrote that “no fewer than five
prosecutors” were complicit in a violation of Mr. Thompson’s
constitutional rights. “They kept from him, year upon year, evidence
vital to his defense.”

The prosecutors’ conduct, Justice Ginsburg wrote, “was a foreseeable
consequence of lax training.” Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined the dissent.
At a news conference on Tuesday, Leon A. Cannizzaro Jr., the current district attorney
in New Orleans, expressed relief over not having to pay a judgment that
with interest was approaching $20 million, more than his office’s
annual budget. He said his office “should not be held
financially responsible for the intentional, unethical and illegal acts
of a rogue prosecutor.”

“If I’d spilled hot coffee on myself, I could have sued the person
who served me the coffee,” he said. “But I can’t sue the prosecutors who
nearly murdered me.” [source]

At this point, considering I already spent 18yrs in prison for a
crime I didn’t commit, AND was gonna be put to death for it… I’d just go
find that prosecutor and put a bullet all up IN his azz. Then walk back
into prison like, fuggit.

Once again…. the justice systems fails the very people it is supposed to
protect.

It is amateur hour in the White House and “We the People” are
feeling the brunt of the inexperience. Obama truly is the worst
President ever.

Thanks to Barack Obama’s “Kinetic Military Operation” WAR
in Libya oil prices have
climbed to their highest level since 2008. Obama claimed
that the military operation in Libya would last days not weeks. The
community organizer and “Ditherer” in Chief could never have been so
wrong. Who but an inexperienced and completed over-matched individual
could ever have thought that a any military action would have ended so
quickly.

Instead of a quick outcome and slam dunk in Libya as stated by Obama,
fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pushed back rebels from key areas in
eastern Libya and have dealt the rebels a severe setback. Today, a
spokesman for the Libyan leader said that
Gaddafi will stay in Libya “until the end”. The result …
oil prices rose to a 30 month
high and the pain at the gaspumps will be felt by American
workers trying to get to work. More ‘Hope
& Change’ from Obama … rising gas prices.

Battles between Gadhafi’s troops and rebels have seesawed
back and forth in Libyan ports and towns since mid-February, with the
price of oil rising more than $20 a barrel since then. Energy
consultants Cameron Hanover said traders are beginning to view the Libya
uprising as a standoff for now. ‘Without control of the air, Gadhafi’s troops have been unable to hammer
home their gains. And, without strong and well-trained ground forces,
the rebels seem incapable of holding onto their gains. Optimism that
Libyan oil might return to the market,
seen earlier this week, was dashed.”

Libya’s oil exports, which
went mainly to Europe, are shut down. The rebels have said they plan to
start shipping oil again, although how soon that could happen is
unclear.

As per ABC
News, the weekly national average gas price showed the highest
price ever during the month of March and the seventh
consecutive increase this week,
Under President Barack Obama, oil
prices have doubled and are up 100%. THANKS BARACK. Not
only has this President been a complete incompetent failure in creating a
$787 billion stimulus plan that created no jobs, added a ridiculous amount to the federal debt with Obamacare and has hampered job
creation by an over-reaching and over-regulative government … the “Not
Ready for Prime Time” President has not got the US into a hornet’s nest
in Libya as oil prices skyrocket.

According to the GasBuddy gasoline price tracking web
site, the price of a gallon of regular gas was around $1.79 when Mr.
Obama took office. Today the national average is $3.58. The lowest
average price in the continental United States is $3.31 in Tulsa
Oklahoma, the highest is $4.14 in Santa Barbara, CA.

Who would ever have thought that during the 2008 Democrat primaries
in the run up to the 2008 Presidential election that Joe Biden would
have been the sage of sages and stated the following regarding the rank
amateur Barack Obama. Watch VIDEO.

Biden said that Obama was not ready for the job and the Presidency is
not one that lends itself to on the job
training. Biden’s reply, “I stand by that statement”. Looks like
Joe was 100% correct. However, as we are reminded by the Gateway
Pundit Jim Hoft, Peggy was wrong. Obama was not going to
pay for our gas, he doubled it instead. I wonder what peggy has to say
for herself today? Sadly, the Kool-Aide drinking Obamaite would blame it
still on George W. Bush.

WASHINGTON
(AFP) - US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday Libya's rag-tag
rebels needed training more than guns in their battle against Moamer
Kadhafi's army but that other nations should do the job. Facing
lawmakers concerned that armed intervention in Libya could end in
stalemate, Gates and top military officer Admiral Mike Mullen said a
NATO-led air campaign had damaged Kadhafi's forces but not yet brought
them to a breaking point.

With the outgunned opposition in
retreat, the United States and its allies were now looking at how to
assist the makeshift force, with weapons or other help, Gates said.

In case you haven’t noticed, the Tea Party movement pretty much has
the Republican establishment exactly where it wants it.

And in case you haven’t noticed, the Tea Party movement pretty much
has the Republican establishment exactly where the Democrats want it,
too.

As the American public takes an increasingly negative view of the Tea
Party (HERE),
Democrats are becoming ever more eager to paint the GOP as a captive of
the Tea Party. And a captive it is.

Yes, Republicans benefitted from the Tea Party insurgence in last
year’s midterm elections. But the relatively moderate GOPers (if you can
actually call them that) now live in mortal fear of facing primary
challenges if they dare defy the Tea Party extremists on matters of
spending cuts or social issues. The GOP regulars are, in effect,
captives.

Witness the SQUIRMING
by House Speaker John Boehner in the face of possible Tea Party wrath
if he dares make any deal with the demon Dems on the budget.

And witness the INSTRUCTIONS from
Sen. Chuck Schumer to his Democratic colleagues the other day to
portray Boehner and the Republicans as painted into a box by the Tea
Party.

Herman Garner doesn’t dispute the drug charge that slammed him in
prison for nine years.

Garner does dispute the damning circumstance that doing the time for
his crime still leaves him penalized despite his being free from the
penal system.

Garner carries the former felon stain, a status that slams employment
doors shut in his face despite his having a MBA degree and two years of
law school.

“I’ve applied for jobs at thousands of places in person and on the
internet but I’m unable to get a job,” said Garner, a Cleveland, Ohio
resident who recently published a book about his prison/life experiences
entitled “Wavering Between Extremes.”

Last Friday Garner joined hundreds of people attending a day-long
conference at Princeton University entitled “Imprisonment of a Race”
that featured presentations by scholars and experts on the devastating
impact of mass incarceration in America.

America imprisons more people per capita than any country on earth —
accounting for 25 percent of the world’s prisoners despite having just
five percent of the world’s population.

More than 60 percent of the two-million-plus people in American
prisons are racial and ethnic minorities.
“The U.S. imprisons more than South Africa did under Apartheid. A
nation that promotes democracy has a racial caste in its prisons. We
must break that caste system,” said the special guest speaker at the
“Imprisonment” conference, Pa. death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who
telephoned from prison.

Racism is written all over the economically/socially debilitating
practice of mass incarceration.

African Americans are 13 percent of America’s population and 14
percent of the nation’s drug users, but are 37 percent of persons
arrested for drugs and 56 percent of the people in state prisons for
drug offenses noted the 2009 congressional testimony of Marc Mauer,
executive director of the Sentencing Project and a conference panelist.

A University of Wisconsin study found that 17 percent of white
ex-cons job seekers received interviews compared to only five percent of
Black ex-con job seekers — a race-based disparity impacting people like
Garner.

Michelle Alexander

Ohio State University law professor Michelle Alexander, featured
speaker at that Princeton conference streamed live on the Internet, said
a major reason why imprisonment rates soared during the past four
decades despite decreases in crime rates is anti-crime policies craftily
manipulated by conservative Republicans for political purposes.

Pennsylvania’s prison population, for example, soared from 8,243 in
1980 to 51,487 in 2010 stated a report released in January 2011 by Pa.’s
Auditor General that noted Pa. now spends $32,059 annually to imprison
one person — a cost that exceeds the annual $20,074 tuition for the MBA
degree program at Penn State University.

Harsh anti-crimes policies were largely a “punitive backlash” to
advances of the Civil Rights Movement said Alexander, author of the
hugely popular 2010 book “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the
Age of Colorblindness.”

“A Black child today is less likely to be raised in a two parent
household than during slavery,” she said.
“In major urban areas almost one-half of Black men have criminal
records thus they face a lifetime of legalized discrimination” —
encompassing exclusions from employment and financial assistance
required to secure a viable quality of life.

Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr

Interestingly both Herman Garner and Dr. Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of
Princeton’s Center for African American Studies, which facilitated the
conference, expressed similar views on the impacts of mass
incarceration.
Dr. Glaude said mass incarceration is a “moral crisis with political
and social consequences for America’s future” during his opening remarks
at the conference.

Garner, in an interview, described the prison system as the “biggest
problem” in the Black community.
While politicians pushing punitive policies help drive mass
incarceration its budget busting persistence implicates the blind-eye of
society said one conference panelist, history professor Dr. Khalil
Gibran Muhammad, the new director of the fabled Schomburg Center for
Research in Black Culture in New York City.

“Middle-class whites and Blacks in the U.S. are a new kind of ‘Silent
Majority’ regarding mass incarceration,” Dr. Muhammad said. “This
‘Silent Majority’ supports unjust policies of increased law enforcement
and incarceration as the only way to address crime” ignoring proven
approaches like “jobs, education and ending societal inequities.”

“The new Black middle class and Black leadership are not attuned to
the suffering in poor Black communities,” West said during the
conference’s Keynote Conversation between him and Professor Alexander.

“We need more middle class people with genuine respect for the poor.
This is more than serving as role model mentors.”

Author Alexander said ending the “mind boggling scale” of mass
incarceration requires “a major social movement.”

One who attended the conference, Daryl Mikell Brooks, an activist in
Trenton, N.J. who operates the popular “Today’s News N.J.” blog, backs
Alexander’s suggestion.

“To fix this problem we need mass boycotts. America only understands
money and violence. We need to shutdown businesses like during the 60s,”
said Brooks, who spent three-years in prison for a conviction he says
was false, aimed at crushing his activism.

“Blacks leaders allowed this incarceration to happen by doing too
little to challenge this repression.”

Linn Washington Jr. is an award-winning writer who and a graduate
of the Yale Law Journalism Fellowship.

SCLC TODAY

TODAY'S NEWS NJ

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TODAY'S NEWS NJ

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Today’s News NJ is an extremely fast growing news blog, pulling in over 10,000 views a month and growing every day! Currently we are building a reputation of a reliable news source, striving to provide relevant, useful, make sense news topics that promise to provide insight into world, national and state news stories that affect you, your family, your neighborhood and your country.

We are also in the process of vast expansion. With the roll out of a new format, we have finally jumped the hurdle from just another blog to a credible news site. Our rankings on Google News and other news collector sites are rising every day. We are in the works on several expansions that will grow the Today’s News NJ community to even new heights! An open forum, a newsletter, members section, print editorials and ultimately a radio show are just some of the plans in the making..

All of this expansion will grow us to the status of common household name sites such as the Huffington Post and Politico. However, we don’t plan to stop there! We hope to provide an alternative media outlet for unbiased, insightful news that you can benefit from and to provide stories and information you may not find on other larger news outlets.

Why advertise with Today’s News NJ?

Today’s News NJ Blog is among the most visited and influential political and News Blogs in New Jersey. Blognetnews New Jersey consistently ranks Today’s News NJ among the top 5 most influential Blogs in the state and has been featured on websites like CNN, Washington Post, The Star Ledger and Fanhouse.com news website a number of times. You can purchase a side banner on Today’s News NJ Blog for $50.00 a month or a once daily in-post ad for $100.00 per month. The banners will appear on each and every page of Today’s News NJ Blog.

For More Information Call: (609) 393 1830 or E-mail: gcw2008@gmail.comYou can purchase a side banner on Today’s News NJ Blog for $50 a month or or an across the top rectangular ad for $100.00 per month. The banners will appear on each and every page of Today’s News NJ Blog. http://www.todaysnewsnj.blogspot/